Charmed, I'm Sure
by annabel-lee1
Summary: Picks up right where the season finale left off.
1. Chapter 1

Picks up right where the season finale left off.

Blah, blah, blah, I don't own Charmed, blah, blah, blah.

* * *

Piper loved walking with her arm linked through Leo's. She glanced at his face, and was momentarily startled. _I'll have to get used to the glamouring,_ she thought to herself. She and Leo and her sisters walked for a few blocks when Paige asked suddenly, "What are we doing?"

"We're going to Dad's to pick up the boys. You know that," Phoebe answered.

"I mean, what are we _doing_?" Paige repeated. "We have no identities anymore. No Social Security numbers, no drivers' licenses, nothing. How are any of us going to make a living? What are we gonna do? Just keep up the glamours for the rest of our lives? When we die, we'll revert to our normal selves anyway, which is going to cause a heck of a lot of confusion to whomever finds us. And do you guys even have your powers anymore? We don't know if vanquishing Zankou restored them or not."

Piper rolled her eyes. "Could we maybe deal with just one thing at a time? First, we're getting Chris and Wyatt. Then, we'll figure everything else out."

"I'm just saying..." Paige started. Piper shook her head vigorously, and Paige wisely kept her mouth shut after that.

The foursome arrived at Victor's house and rang the bell. Victor answered the door, holding Chris and feeding him a bottle. "Hi, baby," Piper cooed at her son. "Look, Mommy's back!"

"Who the hell are you?" Victor demanded. Chris, startled at his grandfather's raised voice, began to cry.

"Dad, it's us," Piper said, holding her arms out for Chris.

Victor backed away. "You're not touching him," he said menacingly.

"Oh!" cried Piper. "Right, the glamour." After shutting the door behind her, she snapped her fingers, and a swirl of white lights surrounded her as she regained her normal appearance. Her sisters followed suit, changing Leo back as well.

Victor's eyes widened. "You know, we really should have some secret word or something, so we don't have to go through this every time."

After Piper and Leo were able to tear themselves away from their sons, the five adults sat down. Piper, Paige, and Phoebe brought Victor up-to-date on the events of the day.

"So you've faked your own deaths," Victor said disbelievingly.

"Hence the new looks," Phoebe confirmed.

"But what are you going to do? You don't have any identities. How are you going to get jobs?" Victor demanded.

"That's what I said," Paige answered smugly. She turned to look at her sisters, who refused to meet her gaze, or their father's.

"Piper, you need health insurance for the boys. Did you think about _any_ of the practical ramifications of what you did?" Victor continued, increasingly agitated.

"Sorry, Dad, we were a little busy saving the world," Pheobe retorted.

"But if everyone thinks you're dead, won't the demons be more likely to come after --"

Victor's comment was cut off by screams coming from the guest-room-turned-nursery.

"-- the boys?" Victor finished, as the girls sprinted down the hall.

Two human-like demons with blood-red eyes stood meancingly over the crib. Evidently, Wyatt had orbed himself inside the crib with Chris, and had put up his protective shield around both of them. The demons were attempting to pierce it with their talon-like fingers, so focused on their task that they didn't notice the arrivals of three more people in the room.

"Get the hell away from them!" Piper yelled. The demons looked up and paled considerably. Piper instinctively flung out her hands, and one of the demons exploded, howling as he disintegrated. The other demon flared out immediately, not wanting to face a similar fate.

"Guess that answers one question," Piper said, satisfied that her powers had been restored.

"Actually, it answers two questions," Paige said.

"What do you mean?" Phoebe asked.

"I mean," Paige answered, "that we know what we're going to do now. We might as well reclaim our identities, so we're going to have to figure out how to explain that we weren't in the manor when the explosion happened. And we're not going to be in our early 20s anymore, either."

"What are you talking about?" Piper asked.

Paige answered, "Hello-o? That demon is going to tell the entire Underworld that the Charmed Ones are still around."

"What?" Phoebe and Piper cried in unison.

Paige looked at them, and they slowly looked down.

"We forgot to put the glamour back on," Phoebe said. "Which means..."

"...We're ba-ack," Paige sing-songed.


	2. Chapter 2

"So, where do we start?" Phoebe asked. They had reconvened in Victor's living room, bringing the boys with them.

"Darryl's gonna kill us," Piper said sadly. "He's covered for us so many times...I don't see how we can get out of this one."

"Well," Paige said, "we know Sheridan was pretty suspicious. And Kyle was with the Feds, and he mentioned once that Homeland Security wanted to get involved."

"Homeland Security?" Phoebe shrieked. "What, they think we're _terrorists_?"

"Maybe," Piper began thoughtfully, "maybe that's it."

"What, _you_ think we're terrorists?" Phoebe asked her older sister.

"No, no. But maybe we tell tell the police some of the truth -- some bad people were after us. They thought we had 'magic powers,' how silly. Sure, we practice Wicca, but it's not like we fly around on broomsticks or anything," Piper elaborated.

"But I actually did fly on a broomstick that one time," Phoebe smiled, remembering the day they'd assisted in the birth of their ancestor.

"Phoebe! Focus," Piper said sharply.

"OK, and the bad guys were determined to get our 'powers,' and they said they'd kill us if we told anyone," Paige said, picking up Piper's thread.

Leo interjected, "But we have to assume the cops knew you were in the house when you vanquished the Nexus. You have to come up with some explanation for how you got out alive. And I think that telling them about astral-projecting is not the way to go."

All of them fell silent, trying to come up with plausible scenarios, until Victor suddenly said, "The bomb shelter!"

"The what?" asked Phoebe.

"Penny built a bomb shelter, back in the early 60s. I only learned about it when she announced she was blocking it off when you girls were little, because she didn't want you to get into the shelter, because we'd never hear you crying in there or anything. There was a passageway from the basement to the shelter, and a separate entrance from outside, in back of the manor. She sealed off both entrances, but if you can find them and unseal them, that'd be a decent explanation."

"Wow, thanks, Victor," Paige said appreciatively. "So let's orb there tonight after it's dark, unseal the entrances, and tomorrow we'll go to the police."

After dinner, the girls dressed in black and Paige orbed them to the basement of the manor. They knew there was still a police presence in front of the house, but they had to hope that nobody was inside. "All clear," whispered Paige. They lit the candles they'd brought with them, and recited the familiar summoning spell:

_Powers of the witches rise, course unseen across the skies._

_Come to us who call you near, come to us and settle here._

In a moment, the spectral form of Grams appeared. "Girls! How _are_ you? Why are you in the basement?" She glanced around. "What _happened _to the basement?"

"No time, Grams. We'll fill you in later, I promise," Piper said quickly. "Right now, we just need you to tell us where the entrance to the bomb shelter is."

"The -- what?" Grams asked, puzzled.

"The bomb shelter, Grams, we're in a bit of a hurry here," Phoebe repeated.

Grams narrowed her eyes. "I'd _better_ get a full explanation, and _sooner_, not later. The entrance is right there," she said, gesturing to one wall. "Draw the outline of a door, and I'll say the spell for you."

The sisters quickly complied. Grams recited:

_What was hidden long before  
Is now revealed.__  
Unseal the door._

With a great creak, the door they'd drawn swung open.

"Thanks, Grams!" called Phoebe as she and Paige rushed toward the open doorway.

"Thanks," said Piper. "We'll summon you back soon and tell you the full story."

"You'd better," Penny's voice echoed as she dematerialized. As soon as Grams was gone, Piper hurried after her sisters.

The passageway to the bomb shelter was about 20 yards, in pitch darkness. Finally, they emerged into the shelter itself, and, tugging on a chain, found that the lightbulb still worked. "Something tells me there's magic keeping this place up," Paige observed dryly.

They found the stairs which presumably led to a door to the outside, but no door was visible. As in the basement, they drew a door and recited the spell Grams had used, and the door opened. The sisters climbed out carefully, checking to be sure they wouldn't be spotted. "OK, back to Dad's," whispered Piper. Holding hands, Paige orbed them back to Victor's house.


	3. Chapter 3

AN: Many thanks to my lovely commenters, loveroffanfic, merryman, debbydo0dles45, and Little Miss-Spell-of-the-Week. I appreciate the encouragement.

* * *

"We were so close," Piper said the next morning.

"So close to what?" Paige asked, adding milk to her cereal.

"So close to a normal life," Piper said. "If we'd just put the damn glamour back on before we --"

"Before we saved your sons?" Paige asked. "Right, 'cause I'm sure you'd have wanted to waste a second before vanquishing whatever demons were attacking them."

"You're right," Piper conceded, "but still. So close."

"Well, we've made our bed, now it's time to lie in it," Phoebe said.

"Dear Phoebe, don't you ever get tired of cliches? Love, Sick of it in San Francisco," Piper said sarcastically.

"Hey! I was just trying to help."

"Yeah, well, don't."

"Guys!" Paige shouted. "Come on. We have to work together, stick to our story, or none of this is going to work." 

_**

* * *

**_

"So let me get this straight," the inspector said. "This guy threatened you, moved into your _house_ and threatened to steal your 'powers,' and you didn't tell the police...why?" 

"Because," Piper said for the fourth or fifth time that morning, "he threatened my _sons_. Do you have children, Inspector Davis? I'll do anything, anything to protect my kids."

"OK," he grunted. "Now, walk me through this one more time. You were in the attic...?"

Piper sighed inwardly, knowing her sisters were facing the same interrogation she was. She heard Paige's voice in her head -- they'd worked on their sisterly telepathic connection for hours the night before after getting back from opening the bomb shelter -- "_Are we done yet?_" Piper hid a smile, realizing that she could practically hear her youngest sister rolling her eyes.

"We'd barricaded ourselves into my room," Piper began, "but then Zack" -- she'd almost said Zankou, rather than the much more normal-sounding name they'd agreed to use -- "pounded on the door and told us he'd just killed Inspector Sheridan." Mentally, she thanked Darryl yet again for telling them that detail, when they'd called him first thing in the morning to tell him what they were about to do.

"He told us he'd send one of his assistants to my father's house to kill my boys if we didn't open up. So we opened the door, and he forced us up to the attic, and wanted us to give him our 'powers.' We kept trying to explain that we didn't _have_ any powers, but he just wouldn't listen. Then he shouted, 'The basement! That's where your power comes from!' And he forced us all down to the basement. The other guys -- his backup, I guess -- had rigged up a ton of explosives in the basement. We tried to stop him, tried to tell him that he'd kill himself and his backup guys, too, along with us, but he was crazed. He said, 'I have the spell,' and started reciting some jibberish. He was so focused on his 'spell' that he didn't notice when we crept away and opened the door to the bomb shelter." 

"And there just _happened_ to be an entrance to the bomb shelter from the basement of your house?" The inspector's voice dripped with sarcasm.

Piper bristled at the accusation. "Our Grams built it in the 60s. I guess she wanted to be able to escape from the basement without having to go outside, if there were an actual bomb. You're saying it's our fault that she was paranoid?"

Inspector Davis didn't answer her question. "So you opened the door to the bomb shelter...?"

"And we went in, and shut the door behind us. The corridor was dark but it was straight and pretty level, and we ran as fast as we could. We finally got to the shelter itself, and there's an airtight door that seals off the passage from the house. About a minute after we got there, we heard the explosion. We were terrified, and we didn't know if any of Zack's cronies were still around somewhere else, or if there would be any more bombs, or what. So we waited for hours. When we finally came out, we were still afraid to talk to the police until we checked on my Dad and the kids. And by the time we got there and explained everything that had happened to my father, it was late, and we figured we'd wait until the morning. And so here we are," she finished.

The officer gazed piercingly at her for a moment. "Wait here," he said abruptly, and left the room. About ten minutes later, he returned. "Alright, your story matches your sisters' stories. And we had someone verify that the bomb shelter exists, and he could see that the door had been opened pretty recently, so that checks out. You and your sisters are free to go."

Each of the sisters was escorted to the lobby of the police station by the officer who'd interrogated her. Together, they walked outside into the sunshine. "Ah, sweet freedom," Phoebe said dramatically. The other two laughed.

Inspector Davis came out after them. "Miss Halliwell, you left your cellphone," he said, holding it out to Piper. His arm brushed Phoebe, who did her best to hide her gasp. Piper and Paige both heard it, though, and knew what it meant.

"Thanks," Piper said, quickly grabbing the phone from the inspector's hand. "We'll be on our way, then." She and Paige each together propelled Phoebe down the street to where they'd parked their car, as Davis looked after them quizically. As soon as they got in and shut the doors, Paige asked, "What did you see?"

"The inspector," Phoebe said. "A demon's going to show him who we really are. But he won't believe it, and the demon," she gulped, "kills him, with an athame."


End file.
